All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.

But did thee feel the earth move?

it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.

It was considered a virtue not to talk unnecessarily at sea.

Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now.